DNR

Painted buntings are small yet striking multi-colored songbirds with a critical connection to scrub/shrub, maritime forest and salt marsh habitats along Georgia's coast. The Southeastern population, one of two populations that exist in North America, breeds along the Southeastern seaboard from North Carolina to Florida.

Data since 1965 shows painted buntings populations in a steady decline. Habitat loss, cowbird parasitism and the introduction of non-native species such as house cats compound pet trade impacts the birds face in their Latin American and Caribbean wintering grounds.

After a pilot survey in 2007 with Georgia Wildlife Resources Division partners in Florida and the Carolinas, Wildlife Resources again surveyed the species distribution, habitat preferences and breeding densities this spring.

Preliminary observations from routes run mostly by seasonal biologist Chris Depkin and dedicated volunteers showed expected occurrences on barrier islands and along the coast, where concentrations lead the southeast. But the unexpected included the extent of inland distribution of painted buntings along the Savannah River drainage, as well as the particular types of habitat used by singing males.

Results from the Eastern Painted Bunting Population Assessment and Monitoring Project (www.pwrc.usgs.gov/point/pabu/) will increase understanding of the role habitat types play and give landowners and wildlife managers better tools and information to enhance or create breeding area for this species. The hope is to continue the survey in tandem with the Carolinas, Florida and the U.S. Geological Survey in 2009.

Coastal nongame program manager Brad Winn said the painted bunting is a high-profile species the public recognizes & and there are indications of local losses with declines in habitat.

Georgia's survey portion is partly funded through the sale of nongame wildlife license plates -- the bald eagle and hummingbird plates -- and donations to the Give Wildlife a Chance income tax checkoff.

Painted buntings are small yet striking multi-colored songbirds with a critical connection to scrub/shrub, maritime forest and salt marsh habitats along Georgia's coast. The Southeastern population, one of two populations that exist in North America, breeds along the Southeastern seaboard from North Carolina to Florida.

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Try to imagine the landscape of much of Georgia 200 years ago - it was vastly different from today.

Early travelers and naturalists described scenes of extensive open forests, savannas and even rolling prairies maintained by frequent fires either ignited by lightning strikes or set by American Indians over much of the coastal plain and into parts of the piedmont. This open, grassy countryside with a low density of longleaf pines or other fire-adapted trees supported a very different range of birds than the species typically seen in most of the region today.

The Zahnd Natural Area in Walker County covers some 1,380 acres of the Cumberland Plateau physiographic region. Zahnd sits on the eastern edge of Lookout Mountain and across McLemore Cove from Pigeon Mountain.

Kristina Summers, a senior public relations and information specialist with the Georgia Wildlife Resources Division, attended much of the fourth annual Teacher Conservation Workshop held June 23-27 at Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center in Mansfield. Here is her in-the-field glimpse of the workshop and participants adventures around the state.

Much has been written of the longleaf pinelands of South Georgia and the fact that most have disappeared through conversion to pine plantations, development, cropland and other overall changes in land use. Yet an even scarcer habitat than a longleaf pine forest is a seepage bog with acres and acres of pitcherplants. Doerun Pitcherplant Bog Natural Area has both – intact longleaf-wiregrass uplands and acres and acres of pitcherplants!